The politically correct
Introduction
Since there is civilization, governments have tried to keep the population controlled, telling them that they can do and not do and in some cases to say and not say. Definition.of defining censorship such as, action of examining a work destined for the public, suppressing or modifying the party that does not conform to certain political, moral or religious approaches, to determine whether or not to publish or exhibit.
Censorship is the preferred tool of totalitarian governments, they use it to prevent the dissemination of ideas that do not go sane with their interests. Citizens of a totalitarian government live in a world manufactured by the rulers where everyone thinks and they do the same because it suits the government.
There are many examples of ancient and modern governments that they practiced and currently continue censoring. In many cases, censorship is reinforced by force and in extreme cases, governments censored people with the death penalty. Many thinkers were sentenced to death for their ideas, one of them was Socrates, Socrates was a Greek philosopher known as one of the founders of Western philosophy and for the creation of the Socratic Method. He was forced to commit suicide by the State in power because they believed that their ideas were corrupted to youth. As George R said.R Martin, when you tear a man’s tongue, you are not demonstrating that he is a liar, you are just telling the world that you fear what he can say.
Developing
The government should not have the power to interfere with our natural rights such as free expression, there should also. But if there are instances where the speech should have consequences depending on its severity. Censorship is not an old problem, it is something that continues to affect us today. Memorable examples includes the Soviet Union, which were responsible for the longest and most extensive era of the last century.
During the kingdom of the Union, the government had complete control over the media. They had control until the weather forecast and changed it when they were convenient, as when the forecast said there was no International Communist Labor Day. Another example is that of the Nazis in Germany before World War II, they burned all the books that were written by Jews, humanists or communists. They believed that by destroying these books, they were going to clean the minds of the population and avoid future pollution. A German author named Heinrich Heine worried him this practice and warned that book burning would result in humans.
Unfortunately Heine was right, during World War II the Nazis killed millions of people who believed they were contaminating society. Aeschylus, a Greek philosopher considered the father of tragedy, said, in times of war, the truth is the first victim. This is especially true when a new dictator arises, the first private freedoms of the population is that of expression.
The organized group does not have to have opposition and that is why they censor anyone who says something against them, then infiltrate the educational system and begin a brain washing so that the next generation believes that their truth is the correct. Something interesting is to see how the lists of books prohibited over time change, that is a sign that indicates what the State does not want its population to know, since they believe that knowledge is a danger to their reign.
The rulers prefer an ignorant and disorganized society, this allows them to take control. Bernard Shaw, an Irish writer said, “all censures exist to prevent someone from questioning current conceptions and existing institutions.”An example of someone being censored for questioning the current conceptions is Miguel Ángel Asturias.
His work Mr. President was prohibited from being published by Jorge Ubico because the book was based on the government of his predecessor Estrada Cabrera, which meant that the book was a danger to him too. The book was forbidden by the fear that the truth from a critical point would open the eyes to the population and realize the situation in which they were living. Years after the government exposed in the work, the book became a classic and Miguel Ángel Asturias came to win a Nobel Prize for literature. This is the case with many forbidden books, many of them end up being classic and inspiring future generations.
Today we live more connected than any other time in history, the technology we have at our disposal allows us access to information that until now was impossible to access. The Internet has possibly been the most influential technology in the last 50 years, it has allowed us to create a world community, where people from different nationalities, cultures, and socioeconomic level can interact. The largest pluralistic community that has existed, with a population of approximately 4 could be considered.5 million people, or 58% of the population. This community has managed to do unimaginable things thanks to cooperation between users.
These virtual communities have managed to do incredible things, since resolving crimes that the authorities could not resolve for years, to do a work of art made by thousands of collaborators, one pixel at the same time. But this coexistence also entails the negative aspect of pluralism, which some groups fail to coexist with others within the same environment. The Internet is composed of millions of communities, each of these with different ideologies that in many cases oppose other groups, this is the perfect recipe for the conflict. On many occasions people dare to say everything they would never say in person for fear of social repercussions.
Many governments currently look at the virtual world and the real world as the same thing. In China the State believes that the Internet should be a reflection of what it is in real life. Every year the government invests millions in technology to regulate the content that the population rises to social networks. It has also passed laws that determine what content is acceptable and is aligned with the ideals of the Communist Party in power. The Chinese State is totally against how the countries of the West deal with this technology because they say that the freedom of all internet information is a danger to Chinese government values.
With each attempt that the government makes to restrict access to internet information, the population has found ways to avoid them. One of them is the use of VPNS that is a private network that through a public network allows users to access data as if their devices were connected to the private network. In other words, a VPN is a technology that the Chinese used to confuse the "virtual barrier" put by the government and make it think that they are in another country.
Many people use VPNS as a security measure, with this anyone who wants to access their IP address, this code can give someone necessary to know exactly where you are whenever you are connected to the network. The VPN can change your IP address every certain minutes so that no one knows where you are accessing the network. In China the news is also quite regulated, it is illegal for web pages or social media users to transmit news. That is a privilege that only some operators have with government permission.
conclusion
Censorship is a violation of our right to free expression. Censorship has been a tool used by the State to be used to silence the opposition. Censorship is a weapon against words, the first step is to ban all those that are against the interests of the government and the second is to use strength and intimidation to prevent that discourse from using.
During the history of humanity there have been countless examples of attempts to censor the population, it is something old and that remains relevant today, especially with the era of digitalization. Governments have banned books that feel that they could be a threat to their reign and believe that the way to avoid it is burning them or forbidding them. The list of forbidden works is constantly modified since each government is made up of different people and each of them with different political agendas.
The State is not the only one that practices censorship, minorities organized with political agendas also use censorship to promote their idealism and to overcome policies use violence or public humiliation. It is important to note that an organized minority is more powerful than the disorganized majority. The Internet has allowed the illusion that minorities are greater than what are. The majorities remain as spectators and often fall for the demands of the minority to avoid conflict or be seen as intolerant towards the minority.
At the time of the politically correct, people do not dare to express their opinion for the fear of social repercussions. It has come to a moment that whatever one says is going to offend someone. The offensive is subjective and instead is constant, which is offensive today, may not be offensive tomorrow. There are two exceptions in which a certain type of speech should not be accepted.
The first type is that of the defamation when the information being transmitted is false, the second is the threats that incite damage to an individual or a group of them. Censorship is something that will hardly be eradicated from humanity, since we will never be completely agreements of something. There will always be people who believe that their ideology is better than that of others and that it is their duty to impose
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